Curator Helen Evans previews the exhibition The Philippe de Montebello Years: Curators Celebrate Three Decades of Acquisitions, which opens October 24, 2008.

Transcript

Helen Evans: I'm Helen Evans and I have the honor of serving as the curator coordinating the special exhibition that The Metropolitan Museum of Art will open on October 24, 2008, in honor of Philippe de Montebello.

The show is the curators' salute to one aspect of his many accomplishments as director—his acquisitions—and, by extension, to many more aspects of his career. The exhibition's signature image is the magnificent self-portrait of the painter Peter Paul Rubens with his family. It was a generous gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman to the Museum early in Philippe's career as director and represents the standard he has inspired us to seek in all of our major acquisitions.

As you know, Philippe is stepping down this year after thirty-one years as director and additional years as curator and vice director. When he made his announcement to the staff, we immediately stood up and gave him a nearly ten-minute spontaneous standing ovation. In that spirit, the Museum's Forum of Curators, Conservators, and Scientists quickly brought forward the idea that we should recognize the importance of Philippe's tenure with an exhibition focusing on an area where we know him most—the process of acquiring works of art. That exhibition will be called The Philippe de Montebello Years: Curators Celebrate Three Decades of Acquisitions.

All of the Museum's curatorial departments carefully selected works for the exhibition. The curatorial Director's Council offered their suggestions. The forum's members submitted their ideas as to the most transformative works that the Museum has acquired during Philippe's tenure.

This was not easy, because we have acquired more than eighty-four thousand works in his time here, so our department heads had to reduce their number to what could be accommodated in the Museum's largest special exhibition space, the Tisch Galleries. And, of course, Philippe recognized a few favorites that we all would want included, especially the Duccio.

The final selection represents the breadth of the Museum's encyclopedic collections, extending across time, from a striding horned demon of the ancient world to the invention of modern photography and exciting high fashion; from the incredibly imposing portrait of America's Elijah Boardman of the eighteenth century to the equally imposing image of an Asian standing Buddha, a work that Philippe was intimately involved in acquiring; and from a wonderfully dramatic and compelling twelfth-century medieval European view of the end of the world to Africa's nineteenth-century equally compelling power figure.

Philippe de Montebello has said that there could be no greater compliment than to have one's curators seek to celebrate one's efforts. We can only hope that he will be as happy with our results as he was in 1986, when Segovia gave him a concert before dedicating the instrument he was playing to the Museum.

Do come next fall and see our tribute to Philippe—highlights of thirty years of the Museum's acquisitions, presented in new and often thought-provoking juxtapositions.